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Doesn’t mean we have to just shrug and accept it.

Brandon Lee was thirty years ago. Memories fade. Alec Baldwin seems like one of those actors who raises a loud fuss and people just cave to get past it. It’s possible that in the experience of seasoned movie people, they’ve been around dozens or even hundreds of prop guns and practically nothing ever goes haywire. Then again, maybe it wasn’t Baldwin so much as everyone was simpatico with the idea of what kind of proper gun they would use and there was no need to discuss it, again because practically nothing ever goes wrong. Yeah, someone’s gonna be in trouble.

Let the kvetching and kvelling begin! 1 The Wire (2002-2008) 2 Mad Men (2007-2015) 3 Breaking Bad (2008-2013) 4 Fleabag (2016-2019) 5 Game of Thrones (2011-2019) 6 I May Destroy You (2020) 7 The Leftovers (2014-2017) 8 The Americans (2013-2018) 9 The Office (UK) (2001-2003) 10 Succession (2018-) 11 BoJack Horseman (2014-2020) 12 Six Feet Under (2001-2005) 13 Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) 14 Atlanta (2016-) 15 Chernobyl (2019) 16 The Crown (2016-) 17 30 Rock (2006-2013) 18 Deadwood (2004-2006) 19 Lost (2004-2010) 20 The Thick of It (2005-2012) 21 Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-) 22 Black Mirror (2011-) 23 Better Call Saul (2015-2022) 24 Veep (2012-2019) 25 Sherlock (2010-2017) 26 Watchmen (2019) 27 Line of Duty (2012-2021) 28 Friday Night Lights (2006-2011) 29 Parks and Recreation (2009-2015) 30 Girls (2012-2017) 31 True Detective (2014-2019) 32 Arrested Development (2003-2019) 33 The Good Wife (2009-2016) 34 The Bridge (2011-2018) 35 Fargo (2014-) 36= Downton Abbey (2010-2015) 36= Band of Brothers (2001) 38 The Handmaid's Tale (2017-) 39 The Office (US) (2005-2013) 40 Borgen (2010-2022) 41 Schitt's Creek (2015-2020) 42 Peep Show (2003-2015) 43 Money Heist (2017-2021) 44 Community (2009-2015) 45 The Good Fight (2017-) 46 Homeland (2011-2020) 47 Grey's Anatomy (2005-) 48 Inside No 9 (2014-) 49 The Bureau (2015-) 50 Halt and Catch Fire (2014-2017) 51 Small Axe (2020) 52 This is England 86, 88 and 90 (2010-2015) 53 Call My Agent! (2015-2020) 54 Happy Valley (2014-) 55 The Shield (2002-2008) 56 The Big Bang Theory (2007-2019) 57 The Young Pope (2016) 58 Dark (2017-2020) 59 The Underground Railroad (2021) 60 House of Cards (2013-2018) 61 Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008) 62= The Good Place (2016-2020) 62= Pose (2018-2021) 64 Detectorists (2014-2017) 65 Orange is the New Black (2013-2019) 66 Mare of Easttown (2021) 67 RuPaul's Drag Race (2009-) 68 Stranger Things (2016-) 69 24 (2001-2010) 70 Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009) 71 Enlightened (2011-2013) 72 Gilmore Girls (2000-2007) 73 Planet Earth (2006) 74 Utopia (2013-2014) 75 Babylon Berlin (2017-) 76 Rick and Morty (2013-) 77 American Crime Story (2016-) 78 The Killing (Denmark) (2007-2012) 79 Mindhunter (2017-2019) 80 House (2004-2012) 81 OJ: Made in America (2016) 82 Big Little Lies (2017-2019) 83 Insecure (2016-2021) 84= Normal People (2020) 84= Narcos (2015-2017) 86 How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014) 87 The Comeback (2005-2014) 88 The OA (2016-2019) 89 Dexter (2006-2013) 90 It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005-) 91 Westworld (2016-) 92 Show Me a Hero (2015) 93 Treme (2010-2013) 94 Louie (2010-2015) 95 Luther (2010-2019) 96 Catastrophe (2015-2019) 97 Hannibal (2013-2015) 98 Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015-2019) 99 Steven Universe (2013-2020) 100 The Queen's Gambit (2020)

It’s a big favorite of mine because for me, verisimilitude is a big plus in just about any movie I see. The more it seems like “yeah, this could really happen”, the more likely I’ll enjoy it.

Verisimilitude? Some actors are insistent on that, and I could see Baldwin being one of those guys. Pretty sure we’ll never see a prop gun on set like that ever again.

Holy shitballs!

My heart said Tampa Brewers. My head said Dodgers Astros.

How great is it when a c-store has separate checkouts for lottery and everything else, and there is invariably only one person working the counter.

“Where am I? Am I in an alternate universe?” ”Why, no, Jim. You’re in Chicago.”

Statues are not for teaching history. They are for revering heroes. I'm with Moses on the whole graven image thing. If they were all toppled, I don't think I would feel bereft of anything.

I predict he will challenge for the title of Biggest MAGhole once he does.

That's what can happen when hard-headed people are thrown together into a situation.

Not a peeve because it's kind of rare nowadays, but I saw this today on my optometrist's website: their phone number is listed as (800) 8-CORNEA. I don't understand the point of listing out their number in this way on a website. I believe the main reason these vanity phone numbers are used is for situations where you can't call right then but it's easy to remember once you do get to a phone. For example, hearing the phone number in a TV or radio commercial, or seeing it on a billboard as you drive by. What was the number again? Oh yeah: eight hundred-eight cornea. That's easy. But if I am specifically on the web page because I am looking for the phone number, writing it out as 8-CORNEA actually slows me down, because now I have to take extra time figuring out which letter lines up to which number. It would be better/faster/more convenient to list it as 826-7632 (I actually had to look up what the numbers were to type them out here).

I do the same although I've been scanning only for old people and children in the line, who tend to really bottleneck things at event search points. Based on your experience, maybe I need to widen my prejudice to include women ... 😂

Isn't it a bagger's job to bag groceries? Isn't that what they get paid to do? Customers don't get paid to do that, right? At one top grocery chain here, frequently when there is both a checkout person (CP) and bagger present (as opposed to just the CP), the CP will ring up an item and, instead of sending it down the belt to the bagger, will set it aside. Then once enough items have been set aside, the CP will then bag them all, then hand the bag to me to put into the cart, and the whole time, the bagger is just sitting there watching us. I have no idea what that is about, but I have seen it at multiple locations of this chain, so it must be part what they are trained to do (like silently handing the receipt to you afterwards, rather than handing it to you with a "thank you" like I was told to do when I worked at Kroger). I've never understood why they do this because not only is this ignoring the available resource that is the bagger, but it's slowing down the entire transaction as the CP pauses ringing up groceries to bag them—again, while the bagger is standing around doing nothing. I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for it all ...

How about newspapers.com! I went in to search for the Cher ad and darned if I didn't find it!

That’s a stretch.

I understand the point you had hoped I might draw. I just don't think this was the best evidence you could have provided.

I signed up for Vic Tanny (the one on Van Dyke in Warren) in February 1989 because of Cher. No, really. I had made a New Year's resolution to get in shape. A month later I'm sitting on my couch drinking beer and chomping on shelled peanuts. Not a good getting-in-shape regimen. I was flipping through the newspaper and I saw a big ad for Vic Tanny, featuring Cher in her sexy workout togs, pouting at me and intoning, through the headline: "You promised." Stopped me dead in my tracks. She was right. I did promise, and here I am getting fat on peanuts and beer, with shell crumbs falling all over me and the couch. I felt disgusted. Well, that was it. That's all I needed to go to Vic Tanny the very next day and sign right up. Anyhow, as I remember, the deal was I pay a chunk upfront, maybe $200 or so, and if I remember correctly, $72 a year for life. I was making under $20,000 at the time, so this wasn't nothing, but I thought, well, this is an investment in me, in my life, so I'm gonna go for it. Best part is, the deal was transferable to any Bally club in the US, so when I moved to a bunch of different states over the next few years, my membership still applied. And every year, the invoice for $72 would come, and I would pay it. It was great. At least until one year, after I had just moved to Chicago, and I got a bill for $99. I called into customer service to tell them they made a mistake. No they didn't, they replied; the $72 annual deal had a six-year cap on it, and now they were allowed to raise rates as they saw fit. But I was told when I signed up that it was $72 a year for life, and I'm not dead yet. Shrug, they replied, we don't remember telling you anything like that. Of course I had long since misplaced my copy of the contract. D'oh. I kept it anyway because $99 was still a good deal. Then it became $149 the following year. Then $199 after that. Finally it got to $299. Eff this, I thought, I own a house now, so I'm getting my own equipment. Which I am still using to this day.

Get the biggest TV you can afford. Once you get to a certain age, the older you get, the farther away it looks. 😂

See, now that's the opposite of my experience with dealers, which is that they want you to finance the car with them because that's one of the two key ways they make money (the other being service). That said, I've paid cash in high interest rate times and that's worked out better for me. This time around I took the 0.9% deal. If inflation is going to stay at 5+% for much longer, it'll ed up being a good deal for me.

And to this point of yours, I believe the current thinking on actual implementation of "robot umpires" is that the pitch will be recorded when it passes the middle depth line of the plate, basically, 8½" deep. I think this makes a lot of sense and would help mitigate the 3-D effects that Edman85 is referring to, i.e., a hard downward-breaking curve that might clip the bottom front electronic border of a 3-D zone and actually bounce off the ground before reaching the catcher; or an eephus pitch scraping the very top back of a 3-D zone that only a batter with a tennis racket could get to. I think this will be the best way to handle it, and pretty obvious as I think more about it. After all, I believe one of the goals of ESZ is to get more balls in play, and allowing hard-breaking pitches that ESZ would call a strike in a 3-D zone which are practically unhittable would undermine that goal.

This may not be exactly to scale. 😏

I'm on Central time, and I can't stay awake for some of them.

Not pretending a thing. Just implying that a ball that clipped the strike zone would have ended the inning had it been called, but it wasn't, and seven runs later ... Also not blaming Astros' seven runs on a blown call. Baseball is a game of events that lead to later events. Just an interesting what if possibility.